


Band-aid Solutions

by Wherethereissmoak



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Episode 5x14, F/M, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-26 13:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9898196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wherethereissmoak/pseuds/Wherethereissmoak
Summary: Oliver and Felicity have and argument about her actions with Thea against Susan Williams, and they say some things they needed to say.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my writing exercise to write a fic about each new episode of Arrow. This is a scene I wished had happened between Oliver and Felicity at the end of 5x14. I don't know how I feel about this piece, but thought I would share anyway. :) 
> 
> Sorry in advance for any typos! My daughter is supposed to be taking a nap, and that's not working out so well lol

Felicity heard the elevator to the bunker ding, so she quickly logged out of Pandora before Oliver walked up the steps toward her computer hub. His shoulders were slumped, and she felt a slight pang of guilt over the rough day that her and Thea’s actions had caused him.

But only a slight pang. Susan Williams had been sleeping with Oliver and gathering intel for a story about him behind his back. Frankly, Felicity did not care if she ever worked in journalism again. And she shouldn’t, if her go-to move was sleeping with the person she was trying to get information on. Gross, just gross.

_You sound like a jealous ex._

Felicity told her inner voice to shut up because she did not want to follow the trail that thought would take her on. It was too soon.

“Hey there,” she finally said to Oliver, who had sat down at a nearby chair while she was continuing her Prometheus searches on the computers. They had mastered the art of companionable silence during the summer when it was just the two of them in the lair. There was a strange comfort in just being around someone that you didn’t have to put on a show for. You could just be.

“Hi,” Oliver replied. “How are the searches going?”

“Same – a whole lot of nowhere. He seems to be keeping pretty underground lately these days. Making his moves through social manipulating rather than with the bow and arrow,” she grimaced as she turned to Oliver. “I caught the news and saw what he leaked about the cover up.”

“Yeah, the next couple of weeks are not going to be so fun,” Oliver said. “Every day I’m starting to think I may have overreached with this whole mayor thing.”

“Hey, stop it. You have done a lot of good as mayor too. Sure, you had a rough start in the beginning, but I think you’ve really grown into the role,” Felicity said, grabbing his hand out of instinct. They both looked down at their joined hands and pulled back quickly. “Besides, no one cares more about making Star City a better place than you do.”

Oliver sighed and leaned back into his chair.

“Thanks, but I’m kind of feeling universally hated right now,” he said.

“Susan?”

“Yeah, she’s not returning my calls,” he said.

Felicity peeked at him from underneath her lashes, trying to gauge how he was feeling about his relationship troubles. His face was stoic in typical Oliver fashion.

“Sooooo, speaking of universally hated…are you still mad at me?” She asked quietly. “For the whole hacking into Susan’s computer and letting your sister frame her for plagiarism thing?”

Oliver sighed and placed his face in his hands, that was his tell for when he was about to start an argument with her that he didn’t want to get into. She wished she didn’t know him so well sometimes.

“I’m not mad…just worried,” Oliver said. “You and Thea went too far.”

“Too far? Oliver, she had not only information that could link you to the Green Arrow, but to all the Bratva stuff and time when you were supposed to be on an island,” Felicity said.

“I know, but…”

“And, according to her notes, which she was taking after she slept with you, she saw the tattoo on your chest,” Felicity said. “It is so skeevy that she was making journalism notes after sleeping with you.”

“I know, she told me about that when she was mad about getting fired,” Oliver said, starting to pace the floor.

“How are you not more upset about this? She was sleeping with you for information!” Felicity stood now, using her loud voice. “I know that I sound like a bitter ex here, but that is disgusting!”

“I was using her too!” Oliver shouted, looking surprised by his outburst.

“What?”

Oliver ground his teeth.

“You were with Billy and so many people were telling me that it was time to move on. She was there, she was interested, so I started dating her. I also figured that the closer we were, the less likely she would be to looking further into my story,” Oliver said. “Something I was obviously wrong about.”

“Oliver…”

He angrily stormed up to her.

“You don’t get to lecture me about my relationship when you so quickly jumped into another one after we broke up,” Oliver said. Felicity opened her mouth to speak, but he raised a hand to silence her. “And I know we try not to talk about Billy because of what happened and how he died, but I’m just going to say it – you hurt me, Felicity. It hurt every goddamned day to see you with him. It hurt that you took so long to tell me about him. Everything hurt so much that I tried to put a band-aid on it by dating Susan.”

“So you are saying all of this is my fault?” Felicity asked angrily.

Oliver banged his hand on the desk in frustration.

“No, I would never say that. What I’m saying is that there was a lot we didn’t talk about when we were pretending to be friends all summer,” he said. “There are so many unresolved issues between us.”

“I thought we were friends,” she whispered, a tear falling down her face.

He closed in on her, so that her backside was pressed against the desk and she had nowhere to go. He leaned in, inches from her face.

“I think you and I both no that we can never go back to just being friends. We were both fooling ourselves,” Oliver said gruffly. His eyes drifted from her eyes to her lips and back to her eyes again. Felicity bit her bottom lip, closed her eyes and nodded. “Dating other people did not fix anything that happened last year. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t change how I feel.”

Felicity looked into his eyes, unable to voice the fact that she wholeheartedly agreed with him. She tried to convey everything she felt through her eyes, because she was too afraid to give those thoughts a voice.

“You feel the same, don’t you?” He asked quietly and she nodded. Oliver leaned forward and gave her the softest of kisses on her lips. She was slightly disappointed because the heat of their argument had left the desire for the heat of another kind of passion. Oliver must have had similar sentiments because he sighed as he stepped away from her.

“So what happens now?” She asked.

“It means you and I are going to sit down, talk, and maybe even yell at each other until we get out everything we need to say finally. Apologize, accusations, pain, anger, all of it.”

“OK,” she said shakily.

“ALL of it Felicity, even secrets,” he said. “You wanted me to be honest with you…it goes both ways.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m going to go to City Hall to talk to my lawyers about the impeachment proceedings and you are going to start thinking about whether or not you are going to tell me about that,” he said, pointing to the Pandora flash drive plugged into her station.

Her eyes widened, and he gave her a peck on the forehead and headed out the door. Felicity stood in silence for a few minutes. Shocked at everything that had just happened. One minute, she was trying to figure out how to comfort Oliver in his relationship troubles with Susan, and the next they got in a fight that seemed like the outcome might be for them to reconcile? It was enough to give her whiplash.

She stared at the Pandora drive for a moment, wondering if she should reveal its contents to Oliver or not. Her friends in Helix had told her not to tell anyone, but Oliver was right. If they had any hopes of reconciling in the future they needed to be 100 percent honest with each other.

Resolved to tell him when they sat down for their talk, she resumed her computer searches for Prometheus. She paused for a moment to touch her lips where he had kissed her. It was something she never thought she would feel again, and now she realized just how much she missed it.

She and Oliver had a lot of work to do to get their relationship back on track. Felicity looked forward to the likely shouting matches that would get them there – and the passion that would be the result.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver and Felicity finally lay things on the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many people requested a second chapter on this to include their reconciliation, so here it is! Now with more yelling and tears and making out! 
> 
> Sorry for any typos. Alas, no beta.

 Felicity paced the loft nervously. Oliver had promised they would have a conversation after he talked with his lawyers, and it had been a couple of hours.

As each minute passed, the anticipation built. She had rehearsed what she was going to say to him over and over again. And each time she changed it. She ran the gamut of wanting to slap him across the head and use her loud voice to jump into his arms, forgiving him and taking him back.

She had started to make a list of things she wanted to say, but then crumpled it up and thrown it in the trash. After a while, she felt like the walls of the bunker were closing in on her. She sent a quick text to Oliver and asked him to meet her at the loft.

Now that she had on her comfy clothes, and brought down one of their favorite bottles of wine – she could not settle.

She wanted to reconcile with Oliver, she really did, but there were things that she needed to say that he would not like to hear. And there were also things she didn’t want to share…about her nightmares after Havenrock…her involvement with Helix. She did not anticipate that going over too well. _My life, my choices_ , she repeated over and over in her head, clinging to that mantra like a life jacket.

She heard the tell-tale sign of feet hitting the floor on the balcony outside and rolled her eyes. When would Oliver ever learn to use the front door?

“Hey,” he said, stepping into the loft. “Sorry it took so long.”

“Everything go OK with the lawyers?” Felicity tried to keep her voice strong and steady.

Oliver winced. “It doesn’t look great. The hearings are next week.”

Felicity nodded. She actually knew about that already because Thea had texted her to ask if they could meet before the hearings about something. She didn’t know what the youngest Queen wanted, but she guessed it had something to do with the flash drive that was carefully hidden in Felicity’s purse.

Oliver stood awkwardly in the entrance to the loft. It was strange how this place that used to be their home together really didn’t feel like one to either of them anymore.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” Felicity said, breaking the ice.

“I’d love some,” he said. “Do you want me to open it?”

Felicity nodded. _God, why do things have to be so awkward between them._

After the wine was poured they settled at the table to talk. Felicity tried not to think about the fact that it was the very same table that he had sat at when she had broken up with him. She could tell Olvier was thinking of it, because his eyes were fixated on the spot where she had placed her engagement ring before leaving. A lost look was on his face.

 _No, no, no, that won’t do,_ Felicity thought to herself. How was she supposed to say all the things she needed to if she her heart softened before she did? Seeking to break his despondent mood, she stood up quickly and grabbed a box of tissues from the counter and slammed it on the table. Oliver raised an eyebrow.

“I’m expecting to ugly cry at some point during this conversation,” she said, relieved that it made him smile.

He sat in silence for another minute, and Felicity couldn’t take it anymore.

“Oliver…you wanted to talk. So talk.”

He widened his eyes. It was an interesting turn of events, since he had been the aggressor in the conversation earlier, and now she was. He had fought for this conversation to happen, but now he seemed terrified to have it.

“I fucked up,” he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

Felicity sighed.

“Do you have a specific fuck-up that you are referring to, or am I supposed to just pick one out of the list?” she asked, inwardly cheering herself for staying strong.

“I will start with William,” he said, hanging his head. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed her hands. Felicity was taken aback to see tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry Felicity. I’m sorry for staying away when you were in the hospital. For visiting my son and lying to you about where I was. For not telling you about him. I’m so, so sorry. I hope that you can forgive me. I should never have even proposed to you while carrying that big secret.”

Felicity’s eyes widened.

“So you regret proposing to me?”

“God, no, Felicity!” He said, his voice getting louder. “I wanted to propose to you when we were still in Ivy Town. I just should have shared everything with you instead of moving our relationship forward while keeping part of myself away from you.”

Felicity closed her eyes, failing the fight against the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. The apology was what she wanted to hear, but was it too little, too late?

“I would have kept it a secret. I wouldn’t have even told Samantha about what I knew,” she whispered.

“I don’t want to make any excuses, because I was totally in the wrong in that situation, but I lied to myself and you when I said that Samantha’s ultimatum was the reason I didn’t tell you,” Oliver said.

This made Felicity sit up on alert. Oliver hung his head, searching for words. She could tell that whatever he was about to say, the memories were painful.

“We all died,” he said, still staring at the floor. “When we were fighting Vandal Savage.”

“What?”

“Well, you know by now that Barry can time travel. Apparently the first time around, we all died at the hands of Savage,” Oliver said.

“So why didn’t that happen?”

“Barry went back in time so he could change the timeline and save us. He warned me so that we could come up with an alternate plan. We wanted to prevent it from happening again,” Oliver told her.

“So what does this have to do with you and me, and your secret about William?”

“You broke up with me.”

“Yeah, I think that’s public knowledge,” Felicity said.

“No, in the other timeline. Barry overheard us fighting about William and you were not too happy about the news,” Oliver said, still staring at the floor.

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Felicity said.

Oliver lifted his head and then nodded. “Yeah, I probably did something stupid in that timeline too. But I was so scared, Felicity. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“But you did,” Felicity said in her loud voice. “Once again, you decided to do things on your own!”

She stood up and glared at him.

“I didn’t just break up with you because of the lie about William. One lie probably would have just made me mad, but I would have gotten over it. I broke up with you because it was part of a pattern of behavior that I thought you had broken!”

She was shouting at him now. Oliver started to get in defensive mode got up and glared right back at her.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“Your pattern where you have things that you keep to yourself that you think that none of us need to know. That you can do this plan and we will all fall in line once we learn the truth,” she yelled. “You did it with your ruse for Slade when you handed me that syringe, you did it when you ran off to join the League of Assassins to stop that virus. You always do that and expect us to go along with things that you fail to communicate with us!”

“Those times were because I was trying to keep you safe!” He yelled back.

“I don’t want to be safe! I want to be in a partnership with the man that I love!”

They both stood there staring at each other, breathing heavily from the adrenaline rush of their argument, but silenced by her declaration.

Suddenly, Oliver’s mouth was on hers and Felicity’s tongue was in his mouth. They poured all of their passion into the kiss. Felicity wrapped her legs around Oliver’s waist and he backed them into the pillar in the middle of the great room. They made love furiously against the pillar, and on the living room floor.

Oliver held Felicity tightly in his arms. She knew him so well she could practically read his mind. She knew he was wondering if this was the last time he could hold her. If that lovemaking was what they did not have a chance to have before. She snuggled into him, and yep it happened, the ugly crying started.

“Shh…shh…Felicity, please don’t cry,” Oliver said. “I’m so, so sorry for everything.”

After a few minutes of him stroking her hair, and Felicity leaving a big damp mess on his chest from her tears, she finally spoke.

“I was going to forgive you, you know? I was so close,” she whispered.

“So what happened?”

“Havenrock,” she said, burying herself further into him.

Oliver lifted her head up so he could look into her tear-filled eyes.

“What did Havenrock have to do with it?”

“You know how you felt, after the Undertaking? That was pretty much me after Havenrock. I felt like all those deaths were on me and that I was not even worthy to go on living,” Felicity said.

“It wasn’t you, it was Dahrk,” Oliver insisted.

“I know. You told me that, Digg told me that, hell even Rory told me that,” Felicity said. “But there’s a difference between knowing things in your head and feeling them in your heart. Logically I could tell you that it was Damian Dahrk’s fault, but…”

“But on the inside you felt responsible,” he said.

“Yep, took a play out of the Oliver Queen handbook with that one,” she said, and his lips quirked up in a smile.

“And Billy? I meant what I said at the time about wanting you to be happy, but I admit that I was hurting so much inside to see you with someone else,” Oliver said. “I thought you were over me once and for all. And I finally realized what an idiot I had been to have lost you.”

“I hate to talk about Billy because it seems wrong, somehow, now that he’s dead. He did not deserve what happened to him, in death and in our relationship,” Felicity said. “I was just with him as a distraction from Havenrock. To make myself feel better. That’s why I poured myself into Team Arrow work, and finding all the new team members too. Like I said before – Band-aid solution.”

“So what changed?” Oliver asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you here in my arms now and not still avoiding conversations about our relationship and Havenrock?”

“Russia. Russia changed things,” Felicity said. “When that bomb was going to detonate and I didn’t know if we were going to survive…”

“You ran into my arms,” he said.

“I did.”

“And then I went home and was with Susan,” Oliver said glumly. “Always an idiot.”

“Well, I had resigned myself that you had moved on officially too, until you stormed in all growly at me in the bunker tonight,” Felicity said. “And, frankly, I’ve never been able to resist grumpy Oliver.”

He smiled at that.

“I’ve noticed, you know,” she said softly.

“Noticed what?”

“How you’ve been trying. How you have way more team meetings that we ever had in the past. How everyone seems to be in on the plan,” Felicity said. “You’re making an effort. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

“Thanks, but I know I still have a long way to go,” Oliver said. “In many ways, I’m still that guy who came off the island.”

“Nope, you ‘re not that guy anymore. Remember, you became someone else, something else,” Felicity said, as she laid her head back on his chest. “There are some days where you are still figuring out what that is.”

Oliver was silent for a moment before asking nervously: “So does this mean we are back together?”

Felicity chuckled.

“Well, if our activities against the pillar and on the rug weren’t an indicator, I don’t know what is,” she said.

“Felicity, we still need to talk about the flash drive,” he said, not wanting to break the blissful bubble they were in at the moment.

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “But can we wait until morning? I’m super cozy right now.”

She snuggled into him even more as he pulled a blanket over them. They both fell asleep.

In the morning, Oliver made her an omelet just like she loved, and she told him all about Helix and Pandora. He had concerns, but didn’t get all growly and lectur-y like she had expected him to. Oliver explained that he understood her need to go through the list and right some wrongs, just like he had when he first came back from the island. But, he promised to be there to support her and pull her back in when needed just like she had done for him.

“You were might light, and now it’s my turn to be that for you,” he said, before planting a gentle kiss on her lips. Felicity stared at him in surprise and wondered at the transformation in him.

After that morning, life passed quickly in a flurry of activity with the impeachment hearings, dealing with Prometheus and Felicity’s hacking activities. But the couple spent as much time as they could together, rebuilding what was lost.

A few months later, Felicity came home to the loft and smiled at the smell of Oliver’s cooking. She was about to find him in the kitchen when she noticed something sparkling out of the corner of her eye. She approached the dining room table and saw her engagement ring sitting there, on the very spot where she had left it almost a year ago. She stared at it for a moment, before picking it up and sliding it on her finger.

She walked into the kitchen, and wrapped her arms around Oliver’s back as he was cooking on the stove. He reached up to pat her hand, and felt the ring there. He spun around, pulling her into is arms.

“Marry me?” he whispered in her ear.

“Yep,” she said.

“Sorry it wasn’t a romance and twinkle lights like last time,” he said.

“Meh, been there, done that,” Felicity said with a smile. “This had romance of its own.”

Two months later, they were married at City Hall, not wanting to waste any more time starting their forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it! I hope we see an Olicity reunion sometime soon. Until then, this will be my head cannon. ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Well, there you have it. Let me know what you think!


End file.
